Run (Book 2): The Crossing

by Rich Restucci

  Chris was sweating profusely as they made their way toward the workshop. It was pitch black inside, the bright sun outside not being able to penetrate this far back. All three men switched on their tactical lights and scanned the area, Rick looking back toward the plane at all times. Gore spatter was evident on some jagged triangles of glass still in the workshop window frames, and several bodies were strewn about with holes in their heads.

  Something was slapping on the concrete floor inside the dark room. Androwski lifted his weapon up so that the tac-light could pierce the gloom through the smashed windows. Two huddled forms were pulling choice morsels from a third prone shape. When illuminated, they turned almost casually, faces dripping. One stood up, immediately and began to stagger toward the light, the other continued his meal uninterrupted. The bolt ratcheted on the lieutenant’s MP5SD3 as he sent a suppressed round through the walking creature’s cranium. Adjusting his aim, he destroyed the second thing as well.

  Peering into the room, they were able to discern that the unfortunate victim had been a man in a business suit, and not Boone. Androwski put a round through the victim’s head before turning away.

  As they moved from the area, Androwski pointed his light up into the loft area. He couldn’t see over the lip of the loft. Putting a booted foot on the first aluminum step, he looked back at his friends. There was no place left to hide in this hangar, and they had checked it thoroughly except for the loft. The SEAL called out softly, “Boone. Sir, are you up there?”

  There was no response.

  “Shit. Stay here.”

  He took the stairs slowly, slashing his light through the darkness above. He peered over the edge of the loft but was unable to visually clear the room because of the racks of airline worker clothing and lockers. “Sir, are you up here? Sir?”

  He couldn’t detect any movement through the racks and banks of lockers, but there were blood drops on the plywood floor leading toward the back of the loft. He started to move further up the stairs when he heard Rick through his earpiece.

  “Contact! Fifty meters and closing.”

  Androwski rushed back down the stairs and met Rick and Chris, who were aiming at a small group of dead people plodding toward their position. Rick holstered his Beretta and unslung his M4. “You guys fire with the suppressors, and I’ll hang back unless they get close.”

  Androwski wiped his forehead. “Keep our six clear, and don’t fire unless you have to.” He sighted a small boy and fired, but missed. “Fuck.” He ran forward and Chris followed, raising his pistol. Rick followed as well, glancing back to keep from being surprised from the rear. Chris fired and the boy fell. He fired again and woman in a security uniform fell beside the boy. Androwski looked at him with his brows raised, and Chris shrugged and fired again.

  The SEAL followed suit, and soon nine more undead had been destroyed. Both men reloaded, and Rick caught up with them.

  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” the SEAL demanded.

  Chris had already slapped a fresh magazine in his Glock and was filling the empty magazine with loose rounds. “I never fired a weapon in my life until you guys trained us in San Francisco. I used to kill the hell out of people in the Battlefield games though. My KDR was almost nine to one.”

  “What’s KDR?”

  “Kill-to-death ratio. It’s how many times you kill others versus how many times you get killed.”

  “Fascinating.” Androwski shook his head. “So you learned to shoot by playing video games. Why am I not surprised?” He smiled and looked at Chris. “You keep your head. If I knew nothing else about you, I would accept you on my team. I’m glad you came.”

  “Yeah, well, zombie plagues notwithstanding, I’d rather be shooting people that aren’t real while sitting in front of my computer.”

  The SEAL smirked at Chris. “Nerd. Oh, and my KDR is like, two hundred to one. And those fucks were firing real bullets at me. Let’s find the chief.”

  Chris jacked the slide on his weapon. “Sure. Noob.”

  “We’ve got twelve minutes left, let’s hit this next hangar.”

  13

  Dallas couldn’t help but look at Anna as they jogged toward a small, windowless, white building constructed from cinderblocks. She reminded him of someone from long ago. Not just the fact that she was extremely fit, or the color of her auburn hair, but her attitude. She was tough as nails, and brave. Hell, anyone who would agree to cross a zombie-infested United States to secure a possible cure for humanity was damn brave. Dallas smiled. He snapped back to reality when a dead woman came around the corner of the tiny structure and started ambling toward them.

  Seyfert stopped and drew his combat knife from a shoulder sling. “Hold fire!”

  Incredulous, Dallas stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You touched, boy? You got an eight-inch reach with that pig-sticker.” He pulled his shaft of re-bar from his belt. “Time ta’ cowboy the fuck, up…er…sorry Anna.”

  “I’m twenty six, I’ve heard the F word a couple times.”

  Red-faced, Dallas nodded and strode forward.

  Anna looked indecisive. “Wait! Androwski told us not to engage!”

  The rebar looked wicked as he pointed it toward the dead thing. “Anna, that thing is in the way. We can’t git to that building without her comin’ up behind us.” He squared off ten feet in front of the creature and let her close the distance. He used a backhand swing and she dropped, but started to get back up. Two more overhand whacks and she stopped moving.

  Dallas was wiping his forehead with his sleeve when he noticed Seyfert standing next to him looking between him and the twice-killed thing. “Damn.”

  The three of them spread out and approached the structure. When they reached it, they came together and looked at the door. It was heavy steel and locked. Seyfert knocked on the door, but Boone didn’t answer. They moved on to the next structure, which was significantly larger. As they came upon it, they realized that the half that they couldn’t see had burned, and the far side of the roof had collapsed. Two motionless corpses guarded the building, both shot in the head.

  The third and fourth buildings didn’t have much in the way of anything, but as they approached the fifth, a large crowd of undead coalesced. “We’ll never make it to that building,” Seyfert told them as he looked at his watch, “and we’ve only got eight minutes left to get back.”

  “What if he’s in there?”

  “Then he’s fucked. We can’t get to him like this. Maybe we can use the LAV to get closer, but I’m making the decision to bug right now.” The cries of the oncoming pack of monsters were getting louder.

  Seyfert pinched his throat mic. “Chief, do you copy?”

  “Roger that, Two, you got anything?”

  “Big pack of dead fuckers coming, but no Actual.”

  “Is it the group we tricked with the LAV?”

  “Negative, this is a new group, smaller than the other, but there are still plenty. I’m calling this end of the mission and we’re gonna RTB.”

  “Solid copy, we’re doing the same.”

  “Copy that, Chief. See you in eight mikes, out.”

  “Okay civvies, move out. We’re gonna hoof it back to the LAV, and meet up with squad one. We can discuss the plan of bringing up the armor to check that last building with the chief when we’re snug.”

  The three of them jogged back to the LAV. Squad one was waiting with the rear ramp down, and Androwski was inside speaking to Stark.

  Rick turned when he heard them coming. “Nothing at all?” Seyfert ran past him up the ramp.

  Anna shook her head as she caught her breath. “Doughnut. There was one more outbuilding we couldn’t get to because of a group of dead, but he wasn’t in any of the places we checked.”

  Rick looked past her. “Yeah, I see them. We should get inside.”

  Chris hit the button to close the rear ramp, and noticed everyone listening to Stark and Androwski speaking. Stark in the driver’s chair, and the
lieutenant in the front passenger’s seat.

  “It was the same message, but it wasn’t on a loop. There two were replies, and at each reply, directions were given to a secure location to be picked up. The city itself is crawling with the dead, it had a population of just over a quarter million before.”

  “And you’re sure the message was live?” demanded Androwski.

  “Yes, sir, they were quite specific. They said to…” Stark put his hand to the left side of his headphones and looked down, his eyes focused. “They’re on now.” He flipped a switch, and a tinny voice filled the LAV.

  “…can make it to any of the coordinates stated, we will come for you and bring you to safety. There are over eight hundred members of the United States armed forces guarding us. We have armored vehicles and aircraft. Food, shelter, and huge walls. Do not give up hope. Come to The Triumvirate, and the Three will provide. Repeat, you are not alone. There are nine thousand of us, and we will help you. Get to the following coordinates in rural Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, or Kansas. The Crossroads Mall, forty one degrees fifty eight minutes point four one seconds north by…”

  The voice listed more locations with coordinates, then repeated itself one more time, adding that it would be back on at the top of the hour, and every half hour after that.

  “Sir, do we respond?”

  “Negative. Our mission is the priority. McInerney told us to help anyone we could as long as that help didn’t compromise the mission or time to complete. Besides, I’m not sure I trust a voice on the radio.” The sounds of the approaching dead could be heard through the hull of the LAV, and the lieutenant shifted his attention to the monitor. “Damn, here they come.”

  The dead were almost on them when Stark fired up the diesel engine, and with a belch of black exhaust from the snorkel pipes, the behemoth began to move.

  “Actual, this is Wanderer, we need to…” Androwski sighed, “Wanderer is moving out. Suggest you RTB at Rock by any means necessary. Good luck.”

  The eight-wheeled vehicle turned in a wide arc and fled back toward the other LAV. Leaving one friend behind, they would bury the friends they had lost as the sun set.

  A solitary figure stood alone in the control tower, watching the LAV drive off through his binoculars. As they faded from sight, he tossed his broken and useless radio on a lightless air traffic console and sat in a wheeled chair. Putting his feet up next to the discarded radio and leaning his head back, he thought about his parents. They couldn’t possibly be alive, they were in San Antonio Texas. He hissed his breath in as pain lanced through his left forearm. He looked at the semi-circular wound and pulled his MK23 HANDGUN, unscrewing the suppressor and placing the weapon in his lap. There’s always a zombie in the bathroom, he thought to himself.

  14

  It was early afternoon, ten miles south of I-80 in central Nebraska when an A10 Thunderbolt screamed over the heads of the mission team. Joe the puppy had started whining, and Anna had needed to pee, so now Rick and Androwski had their backs to her while she took care of business behind a small trading post in the middle of what seemed like a million miles of corn fields. Joe was running around happily near them. Androwski had forbidden anyone to go into the restrooms, as there was a bloody hand print on the men’s room door.

  Rick was staring up at the noise, but the SEAL had dived on to the ground and covered his head. He looked up into Anna’s eyes. She was squatting with her pants around her ankles. “Like the view?”

  Androwski looked in all directions. “Fuckin’ Warthog!”

  Anna stood and pulled her pants up. “I didn’t think I was that ugly.”

  “What? No! No, no, no, the plane! The plane is called a Warthog.”

  She stuck her bottom lip out in mock despair. “I never did go to prom…”

  Androwski stood and brushed himself off. “Dammit, he must have seen us. Stark! Anything on comms?”

  “Negative sir, no chatter.”

  “Keep monitoring, and let me know if anybody else is out there.”

  “Copy.”

  Two helicopters, a blue and white Channel 8 traffic copter and a military Blackhawk followed shortly after the jet. The traffic chopper slowed and looked down at them for the briefest of moments, but then continued after the other aircraft to the south.

  Dallas, Seyfert, and Chris came out of the trading post, arms laden with appropriated foodstuffs, and staring into the sky. Dallas had a full Native American headdress on, the faux white feathers blowing in the warm Nebraska wind. Seyfert was chewing on a Slim Jim. “Place is a gold mine, Chief, tons of packaged goodies. Maybe—”

  A huge explosion shut Seyfert up mid-sentence. The blast was far off to the south, but that was the direction they had intended to head. A massive mushroom cloud of fire erupted a hundred or so feet into the air, and the team felt the wind and heat from the blast a few moments later. Even from the two or three mile distance away that they were, they could tell that the cornfields were ablaze.

  Androwski and Seyfert looked at each other wide-eyed. “Jesus, they dropped a Hades.”

  “Is that a nuke?” Chris demanded in a panicked voice.

  “No, but almost,” Seyfert answered while still looking at the conflagration. “It’s a bad-ass MOAB full of napalm-like stuff that they can ignite by remote control. Everything within half a mile of that detonation just reached about a thousand degrees. It will burn for days. Weeks if all the corn goes.”

  Dallas took the headdress off. “Well, I’m pretty damn happy that we wasn’t a mile further south.”

  “Agreed. I wonder if they knew we were here and dropped anyway.”

  “We’re alive, so I don’t give a shit about any of that,” Androwski said. “What worries me is why they would drop ordnance like that here. The only thing I can think of is that there were a shitload of Limas over there, and we’re only a couple of miles away. Button up, we’re out. And Dallas, that ridiculous thing is not coming in my LAV.”

  Chris came down the LAV ramp empty-handed. “One more trip into the store?”

  Androwski nodded, “Yeah, I’ll come with.”

  When they had loaded their booty of canned goods and bottled liquids, they pushed on. The lieutenant decided that they would go north. Directly east was out of the question as Androwski didn’t want to meet up with this other group of survivors near Lincoln. He thought they might get conscripted into whatever rag-tag military operation was in this part of the country, and his commanding officer had given him specific orders to do no such thing.

  Four hours north, and they shifted east again, on Route 20. This route would keep them a hundred twenty miles north of the Lincoln area, and hopefully out of sight of prying eyes.

  No contact had been attempted from the group with the air support, but the message from the Triumvirate was broadcast on all frequencies every half hour. The signal was significantly stronger than it had been in Wyoming.

  After two hours of flatlands and small farming towns heading north, it was back into the corn again. Both sides of the road had three meter stalks as far as the eye could see, which was about twenty feet into the yellow vegetation. An hour east, and they came upon a crossroads in the waning daylight. Half a mile north of them was a farmhouse.

  Chris looked longingly at the large house. “I could sure use some sleep in a bed, a real bed.”

  “We all could,” agreed Androwski. “Stark, let’s recon that homestead.”

  The LAV turned northward and they circled the farmhouse and huge barn before parking in the dirt driveway. The recon went smoothly. Chris, Seyfert, and Rick checked out the house, while Dallas, Anna, and Androwski looked into the barn. The house was locked up tight, with boarded windows on the lower floor. Repeated knocks on the door yielded nothing from the inside. The barn wasn’t an animal barn, but housed a huge green combine harvester and big dump truck. Various other farming equipment adorned the walls and hung from hooks all over the place. Two fifty-five gallon drums of diesel fuel were found as well. The lo
ft was empty except for a desk with a small computer and a dead man. He had taken his life with a shotgun, and there wasn’t much left to see. There was a photograph with a pretty woman in a floral print dress and two little blonde girls clutched in his decaying hand. Androwski said not to touch anything, and they left the man in peace.

  Seyfert reported the locked house to Androwski. “Three doors, front, back, and bulkhead to the basement. Bulkhead is the strongest, it’s made out of steel. Back door is the weakest, flimsy wooden thing, but it’s braced from the inside. Front door is solid oak, also braced. That window,” he pointed to an open window on the second floor, “looks to be our best way in without destroying the barricades.”

  “Okay then, you and I are on point. Chris, Anna, back in the LAV. Rick, Dallas, cover our six while we get in. We’ll recon and let you know if it’s safe. Stark, button up. If a hundred Limas come out of the corn, I want you to lead them away then get back here to pick us up.”

  “Copy.”

  Ten minutes later, a different window opened up on the second floor and a roll-out fire ladder tumbled down, and the lieutenant stuck his head out. “It’s clear. The barricades are so well built that I think we should come and go through the upper floor. Bring the sniper rifles.”

  The civilians climbed the ladder and entered the house with Seyfert’s help, passing their weaponry in first. They looked around at a child’s bedroom, immaculate, with a Littlest Pets bed spread, and picture books on shelves on the wall. AMY’S ROOM was on the front of the open door, neatly printed in block letters on yellow construction paper. Pictures of SpongeBob torn from magazines, and some other cartoon characters nobody knew adorned the door as well.